Open mic nights: What they are and what makes them weird. Part 1? It’s not a story though? (Also: I need to make an executive decision about capitalization and punctuation and the use of brackets in my parenthesis. Then I need to stick to it.)

The open mic night is one of the strangest species of whatever it is.   An open mike (For the life of me, I can’t decide whether to use ‘mike’ or ‘mic’ [haha ‘for the life of me’{“For the car of me, I must find a way to win this game of blackjack.“ “For the English class of me, I must write regular blog posts.” “For the dog of me, I must go purchase food, preferably beneful.”}]). Lol/sigh.

An open microphone night is a gathering of odd people (musicians are the weirdest) who take turns putting their dignity on the line and submitting themselves for the judgment of others.  The others being the audience, which often consists of the staff, the other performers, and 30 other people who came only to see their arrogant, probably untalented friend perform later, so they’re just going to talk and be obnoxious until then. 

The audience depends on the venue, the area directly around the venue, and the area around that (Lol for vagueness). Although all the venue really affects in regards to the audience is the frequency with which drunk people appear and start singing or yelling, and the less worried about but slightly more disruptive frequency with which homeless people on hallucinogens begin playing harmonica on the stage. (That has the potential to be the most amazing awesome articulate antagonizing alliteration AEVER!) People always seem to leave out that particular frequency when they’re preparing for open mic nights and making their calculations(?).  I promise you they *always* regret that ‘error of omission’ (at least whenever that frequency rises above 0 [Wow, this sentence “contained” *three* different ‘ways’ of emphasizing words]That’s 7, although not all of them are legitimate [that’s what he said.] Get it? Like children?) 

When I google-image-search "harmonica" and "hallucinogen", I get the Rolling Stones.

I worry that I can be hard to keep up with.  I imagine attempts to track down and keep up with my train of thought to be a lot like The Italian Job, or at least the long scene with the smart cars.  Think about it.

visual aid

 The atmosphere of the venue can be generous and supportive of the performers or hateful and degrading. (The third option is just plain ignorant of them; they act like it’s a radio playing in the background [They pay zero attention to it except for one time when a cover of a popular song is played. Then they go “I love this song!” They sing loudly and painfully along until they eventually go back to their loud conversation about nothing in particular besides how loud it is in there.)

They're all rather short.

Another big variable that depends on the venue is the quality and quantity of equipment available.  Some places have tons of microphones, a drumset(one word or two?), a keyboard, and all kinds of amps and sound equipment.  Other venues might pretend to have more, but they’ll reveal at the last minute that all they have is two working microphones, (the 2^nd one is stuck at about a foot from the floor [Which begs the question: who or what was that for? Which house-elf or singing chipmunk performed here?]) one good guitar plug-in with no opportunity for sound distortion, and *one* broken bongo drum. (Not to mention some old, ratty [meaning they look and smell as if rats have been integrating them into their daily routine.  You can consider the implications if you so desire.]), and old guitar picks that you found in the podium you borrowed to use as a music stand because you’re too lazy or worn out by constant drug use to be able to remember your lyrics.

Next week I’ll talk about what seems to remain constant from open mic to open mic, and how I know about this! (If I have space; I tend towards the longwindedness.[not a word])